How Candidate Personas Play A Vital Role in Boosting Your Recruitment Strategy

These days, candidates have various ways to access the most fantastic job opportunities. With the help of plenty of job portals, social media websites, emails, industry-specific websites, etc., talent managers and recruiters have to be the ones to reach out to the candidates so that they can find the best matches. There are various ways to find the best candidate for your company, but having the best and strong candidate persona can help an organization know what to look for. In this comprehensive blog, we are going to uncover all the essential points about candidate persona and how it plays a vital role in boosting a company's recruitment strategy.

What Is A Candidate Persona? 

It is essential to understand all the perspectives about a candidate's persona and why it is so necessary to find an ideal candidate. And also need to know how it would be beneficial to employers if they create a model or perfect candidate persona for an interview. 

A candidate persona refers to a profile or fictional portrait of the particular job position or the ideal candidate that is driven by data. When a recruitment agency or managers create a perfect candidate persona for an interview, it includes authentic research and discussions with HR professionals and stakeholders to recognize the most relevant characteristics that an ideal candidate must possess to be a successful asset for a particular company in that specific job opening. 

According to top recruiting agencies and HR professionals, the attributes that define an ideal candidate persona includes - 

• Relevant Education 
• Work Experience 
• Specific skills 
• Good Communication Skills
• Professional goals and motivators 
• Personal social media handles and online presence
• Preferred work atmosphere
• Geographical location

All the above points might look like plenty of data to collect and organize. But it is essential. After all, it would be a better option to spend ample time sharpening the axe than wasting our time and resources as well towards an inconclusive outcome. These data will help any of the companies to create a perfect persona for shortlisting the ideal candidate. Thus, it would be helpful for you to attract the right candidate for the specific job. 

How Does A Candidate Persona Affect A Recruitment Strategy?

Recruitment is a critical and complex process. Creating an ideal candidate persona is worth your time! A perfect candidate persona helps the company identify the accurate candidate's traits. It is also helpful in designing your sourcing and top recruiting strategy accordingly. 

A candidate's persona helps an organization in these ways that I am explaining below - 

• It helps a company to get a deep understanding of recruitment strategy consulting from various stakeholders. 
• It helps in devising a company's sourcing strategy to get suitable candidates for the organization.
• It helps an organization create recruitment online, such as job descriptions, application forms, emails, and introductory materials to get more applicants for the specific job. 

Why Is It Essential To Create A Candidate Persona For Interviews? 

Creating an ideal candidate persona for any job position helps the particular company know and understand what they are searching for in a perfect employee before proceeding to the actual recruitment strategy and process. Also, a candidate's persona helps with plenty of critical aspects of the recruitment strategy, and these are given below - 

First: Job Descriptions

A job description is the first medium of contact between the candidate and the employer. And as we know, the first impression is always the last impression. So, it is now essential to make a perfect first impression on your prospective employee. 

By writing compelling and engaging job descriptions that show your ideal candidate's persona, you can make the impressive and perfect first pitch in front of the candidate about the job offer. A company should remember that employee branding is as essential as employer branding. 

According to HR professionals, job candidates who understand the traits an organization wants in their ideal candidate help them figure out whether their skills and credentials match the job position. This step plays a vital role in boosting the recruitment strategy. It will make sure filtered applications. 

Second: Optimize Recruitment Sourcing And Marketing

After knowing "who," you will probably be able to find "where." if you know who you need to target will aid in getting a better insight or solutions on where to find them. This will help a company to pool its resources to optimize better and top recruiting marketing, resulting in strategic and efficient sourcing. 

For example, if a company is searching for a senior software systems engineer, that company would post the job description related to that job position in various dedicated software engineer job portals to reach their targeted audience. And, if you are searching for a social media specialist or a graphic designer, then you will most likely find your audience on Instagram and Facebook rather than on other job portals. 

Third: Improves Your Recruitment Metrics

According to recent studies, the success rate of finding the best candidate by an unstructured interview process is about 20%. An ideal candidate persona can give a structure to the company's recruitment strategy as well as the process that can necessarily increase the success rate by finding the right candidate for the specific job.

Moreover, a candidate's persona will stay throughout the recruitment process. This will help the HR professionals make the proper and efficient hiring decisions, time, and resources. 

Fourth: Integrates Your Diversity Initiatives

A candidate persona helps the company to recognize the gaps in its talent acquisition strategy. An organization can stitch the gaps by creating an ideal candidate persona of the kind of employee the company wants to boost diversity in its organization. The accurate persona can help you proactively target the exact type of applicants who will bring fresh ideas, diverse personalities, and new experiences. In this way, a company can implement more variety in hiring new candidates. 

This step will help you with employee branding. In turn, the company's workforce will be further engaged, productive as well as innovative, which will boost the success and growth of your business.

All the above steps are beneficial in creating a fantastic ideal candidate persona. These steps are essential parts that every company should focus on. Furthermore, a perfect candidate persona will help you in the following way - 

• It reduces the time required to hire employees. 
• It decreases the expenditure per joining.
• It helps in creating efficient application forms as per your target audience to optimize the completion rate of applications.
• It filters out the unqualified candidates and also provides you with quality leads. 

Conclusion 

As I have explained in this blog, when your ideal candidate persona is reflected in your recruitment strategy and job description, it will 100 percent offer an acceptance rate. I have uncovered points like what is a candidate persona? How does a candidate persona affect a recruitment strategy? And why is it essential to create a candidate persona for interviews?

And I hope you have got all your answers through this blog. Finally, when you have an accurate candidate, it will surely increase the satisfaction rate of both the employee and the employer. Also, it increases the retention rate of candidates. Overall, this helps with better employee branding.